The frame

Axis

Laser-module and driver

For the laser module I choose a relatively cheep heat sink and a standard 3-layer glass lens (450 nm) and a Osram PL TB450B 1.6 W_opt. 450 nm diode from China. The lens came in a package with the heat sink.

As the power source for the laser I am using a constant current power supply (max. 3W) with TTL support.

First I had to unsolder all plastic sockets from the board since I could not find the matching connectors online. I replaced them with common 2-pol Molex sockets and made my own connectors with cables.

To adjust the current the laser will get, I adopted the idea of a dummy diode from power-LEDs (dummy LEDs).

A BD809 was mounted on a good heat sink and a 20 mA LED + 470 ohm resistor was soldered to base and collector of the transistor.

With this dummy laser diode I could adjust the current without risking my Osram diode. The transistor converts all energy into heat, so with 1.2 A @ about 4.2 V which are typical parameters for the laser diode it generated

about 5W of head. There is no arguing about whether that a heat sink is necessary !

To switch the laser on/off by grbl, I connected the TTL- pin to a common ground with the arduino and the TTL+ pin with a pull-down resisitor to pin11 (grbl 0.9) of the arduino. By variating the spindle spped with the S<number> g-code paramter a PWM signal controls the on/off time of the laser and resulting in <number> % of power.

With the power source set up, I began to mount the diode itself into the heat sink. This was more difficult than I thought since there is very little space for the cables and the isolation of the pins.

With the cables finally soldered to the diode, I applyed a tiny amount of silver thermal paste to the diode. The data sheet states, that the main heat dissipation is done by the tiny metal ring around the diode.

I wanted to be sure the diode runs within thermal parameters (>70 °C).

For active cooling I removed the fan that came with the laser heat sink and mounted a very powerful 4 cm fan on it. This fan not only cools the laser, but also blow all smoke from cutting/engraving away.

So nothing can condensate on the glass lens.

Stepper motor driver board

I basically copied the GRBL shield or any other stepper driver board for the A4988 driver there is.

I used BlackBoard 1.1 for the PCB design, neverthless the wireing is horrible ! I am not that into electronics.

After a lot of reseach and a lot of opinions from folks in different forums I decided to install a 220 µF / 35 V and a 0.1 µF for every motor driver module at the V_mot and Vdd pins to reduce voltage spikes from the motor which might damage the driver.

Every module has its own switch to set the microstepping and a general enable jumper.

The momentary switches at the left side of the arduino board are used to resume/stop the machine via GRBL. They are connected to the reset/abord (A0) and resume (A2) pins of the arduino. The TTL-port of the laser driver board in the lower left corner is connected via a 39 kohm resisitor to pin 11 to control the laser power via PWM.

The 4-pin floppy connector in the lower right corner is used for the main power. A computer power supply is connected which feeds the motors and the laser.

Calibration

Calibrating the X/Y-axis of a plotter or CNC machine is actually quite easy. I did it as described in this video. First i had to know the theoretical steps/mm per axis. To calculate this value I multiplied

the steps/rev. (200 for most NEMA Motors) with the microstepping of my motor drivers.

200 steps/rev. x 16 microstepping = 3200 steps/rev.

For my A4988 drivers the maximum value is x16-microstepping, so the motor needs 3200 steps to do one full revolution. Next, I had to take care of the specs. of the timing belt. For the GT-2 the pitch is 2mm and 20 teeth pulley.

Now to get the theoretical steps/mm I divided the steps/rev. by 40 and get 80 steps/mm as the starting value.

2 mm x 20 teeth = 40 mm

3200 steps / 40 mm= 80 steps / mm

The correct value will just differ a tiny bit from the theoretical one, it basically depends on the accuracy of the mechanics.

To do this I ran defined distance on one axis. I marked the starting point and the endpoint of the laser with a pen (or burn it into your working area :)) then traveled the longest distance possible for this axis.

The longer the distance is, the more accurate is the calibration. In my case that is 550 mm (g-code X550). Then I measured the distance between the two points. Due to some inaccuracies the distance

travelled is not 550 mm. A slightly shorter or longer distance will be measured. Instead of the 550 mm my plotter moved 557.5 mm.

As we already know the steps/mm, we can calculate the theoretical steps the motor has to take:

80 steps/mm * 550 mm = 44000 steps

But the measured distance was 557.5 mm, so this is as 200 additional steps<p>

80 steps/mm * 2.5 mm = 200 steps

were taken. Subtraction the additional 200 steps from the theoretical value and division by the travelled length gives the correct steps/mm for my machine.

(44000 steps / 550mmm - 200 steps) / 550 mm = 79.6363 steps/mm

Analogously this calculation was repeated for the y-axis and entered into the grbl firmware.

Drawing Software and g-code generation

For drawing and editing SVG vector graphics I use Inkscape and the 'laserengraver' plug-in. I will not go into much detail here since there are a lot very good tutorials out there for this.

Just one additional remark:

Since I use the spindle-speed control via PWM to adjust the laser power, I have to add the laser power SXX (for XX% power) at the top of every g-code file (*.nc) according to the material I want to cut / engrave.

This value is highly experimental and it can take quite some to get good results (see next paragraph for details).

G90

G21

G0 X6.5995 Y34.3131
S80 ;This line was added
M03

G1 F50.000000

G1 X3.0872 Y34.3131

The Universal G-Codesender is the software of choice for me to send the g-code files to the grbl firmware. I find the macros (v.1.8) quite handy since you can set them up to help you with the new zero-reset.

I have C1 configured (S0.3M03), 0.3% power, laser on) to give me a weak laser dot, that does not damage my eyes instantly, as an orientation point on the working area. A click on C2

(M05G10P0X0Y0Z0, laser off, reset zero) resets the current position as new zero.

Materials I tested so far

Here I will present my initial experiments with different materials, laser powers and feed rates. Before even staring with these kind of experiments, one must be sure that the focal point is correct. Furthermore you have to adjust the hight of the laser according to the thickness of your material by hand.

If the focal point is off by just a view millimetres, all the experiments were just a waste of time (trust me, I wasted quite some time). With the correct focal point the laser power can be reduced and/or the feed rate increased.